Around 30 years ago, during his first tenure as the most successful NSW coach in Origin history, Phil Gould effectively boiled the crème de la crème of rugby league down to a game of forcings back. Or forcies back, if you like.
All Gould wanted to know from his coaching staff in terms of in-play feedback, he told them, was exactly where the Blues back three were fielding kicks from Allan Langer and Kevin Walters. And where his own NSW halves were kicking from.
Catch and kick the ball further away from your tryline than the opposition, and you’re winning the Origin arm wrestle. And a schoolyard game of forcings back.
“There’s an art to getting bang for buck from your statistics and data,” Manly’s Anthony Seibold says.
“Because these days there’s honestly more than you would ever want to know. There’s so much analysis you could use. The key is identifying and using just a few things that matter most.”
Gould, like more than a few senior NRL officials over the years, has sat across from players during contract negotiations and had them present their own fantasy football scores as a misguided bargaining tool.
A young Phil Gould and Jack Gibson, who introduced tackle counts to rugby league, in NSW Origin camp in 1989.Credit: Colin Townsend
NRL clubs are loath to divulge the analytical IP that offers a potential premiership edge.
But plenty speak in similar terms to the Canterbury chief’s recent Footy Talk podcast assessment that: “Some of the stuff that you’re reading in the papers about judging team performances or players performances are not the metrics that we use internally for educating and assessing players, the way we interpret the game.”
In defence of those damn papers – some of which are published by this masthead – we work with what we’ve got. And we don’t have the hundreds of thousands of dollars NRL clubs do to spend on data analysts and statistics programs.
“The numbers we use, or what gets passed to us as players at least, are very different to what you’ll see on TV when you’re watching a game,” Roosters captain James Tedesco says.
Manly coach Anthony Seibold.Credit: NRL Imagery
“Completion rates, tackle efficiency – people will look at them to judge a team but some of the teams that excelled at those last year didn’t make the finals,” Seibold explains.
The NRL website confirms it. Completion rates? Six of the best 10 sides at finishing their sets ended up outside the top eight.
As did the three best sides for tackle efficiency – which combines missed tackles and offloads conceded: The Warriors (88.7 per cent), Dragons (88.4 per cent) and Raiders (88.1 per cent).
“We’ve narrowed it down to five win metrics for us,” Seibold says.
“Essentially, that’s all we’ll look at. The biggest single measure we see in terms of winning and losing games is run metres per play-the-ball, on both sides of the ball, defensively and attacking.
“It’s a simple tick or a cross whether we’ve won that battle. And since we’ve been doing it, it’s been over 80 per cent of games that are decided by that one statistic in our Manly games.
“It’s not a completely exact science, but it is the best indicator of win-loss that we’ve found.”
When Champion Data tested Seibold’s theory on run metres per play-the-ball across the entire 2024 season, five of the six most successful teams played finals.
Elsewhere, the numbers clubs truly value can get more nitty-gritty than you’d ever imagine.
In 2020, before Penrith started on their run of four straight premierships, Ivan Cleary put the onus on his halves, Nathan Cleary and Jarome Luai, and their individual play-the-ball speeds.
If your playmakers are taking on the line and generating quick ruck speed, then your offence is naturally rolling forward, and the opposition defence will eventually wilt.
Brisbane’s 2023 revival was built in no small part around push supports – the term for a player running through the defensive line alongside a ball-carrier, offering both a potential decoy runner or ball-receiver.
Reece Walsh on the fly for Brisbane.Credit: NRL Imagery
Every player was given a push-support target for each game based on the position they played, with superstar fullback Reece Walsh’s the highest.
The architect of the support-play-focused game plan, then-Broncos assistant coach Lee Briers, claimed he had only lost one game in six years of Super League coaching when his team had hit their push-support target.
“A lot of clubs have cottoned onto support play of late,” one leading club figure, says, speaking on condition of anonymity so he can’t be accused of giving away his own coach’s secrets.
“Historically it hasn’t been recorded, but that’s a simple one clubs really value because it can be quantitative. But it’s a measure of a player’s effort areas, too.
“A lot of the stats that coaches really value aren’t just simply counted, but they measure quality, too. The old ‘how many tackles made and how many missed’ – well, racking up 50 tackles is all well and good, but you can’t have 40 of them lead to quick play-the-balls.
“So monitoring the difference between quality of tackles, that’s the extra step that clubs are now taking.”
Players can appreciate the value of data’s emergence in rugby league.
When Melbourne successfully targeted Penrith’s back three and in particular, kick-return weapon Brian To’o in a round-24 nail biter last year, Storm coaches mentioned To’o’s limited numbers during halftime chats to reinforce what proved to be a match-winning game plan.
Ipads loaded up with specific first-half video clips are now a regular feature in any dressing room.
But by the same token, stories of players keeping track of their own SuperCoach scores have long done the rugby league rounds. And a general wariness of being overloaded with numbers will likely always exist given these are professional athletes, not data analysts.
“I don’t need to go look at my stats for positive reinforcements or how many mistakes or missed tackles I’ve made,” Sharks captain Cameron McInnes, owner of the NRL’s highest tackle count with 81 against Penrith in 2023, says.
Sharks warhorse Cameron McInnes.Credit: Getty Images
“It’s the team stuff I’ll look at. There’s definitely merit in stats and if you’re not working hard, it’ll show up. Everyone’s so athletic now compared to 20 years ago, but you still need to be a footy player first.
“So have your data, but understand the footy players, too.”
Eels halfback Mitch Moses has grown to use data and in particular, video analysis, more and more after 12 years of NRL.
“I’ll go through video after every training session and analyse what we’ve done,” he says.
“I’d say I do more of that analysis now compared to the amount of field work I did when I was younger. I put more into how I could break down a team or a defence with video and the coaching staff will bring the numbers into it, and we’ll go through it together.”
“Above all, you still use your coach’s eye,” says Seibold, who was criticised during his ill-fated Broncos stint for overloading a young squad with information and intricate game plans.
“Data is a tool and a resource, but that’s all. That’s why I’ve challenged our analysts to boil it down to five things, or the few key things that matter most. The real skill is keeping it simple, but effective.”
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